


What Once Was Alive

by Rouge_Angle



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Female Character, Seras-centric, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 15:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12684549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rouge_Angle/pseuds/Rouge_Angle
Summary: A closer look at how Seras starts to adjust to unlife.





	What Once Was Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I really love Seras as a character and think that there isn't enough fic with her as the central character. I just wanted to get deeper into her thoughts about things. If I get more ideas I might continue this. :-)

_hurtssomuchithurts_

_helpmepleasehelp_

_Daddy? Mummy?_

_Ohgod scared - im_

_i'mdying, don'twannadieiwon'tiwon'tiwon't_

_I WON'T._

-x-

Her mouth's full of blood. It tastes like pennies and something rancid and every slow suck of air sends it trickling a burning trail down her chin. Seras manages to gurgle wetly as Alucard gives her his attention. Alucard. Weird name, weird person. (Person's probably not the right word for someone who can get shot to pieces and put himself back together again, but he  _looks_  like a person and thinking is hard.) Everything else has gone all fuzzy, but he's still clear. Tall— _so tall_ —and bright red. Just like blood. It’s all over her now, searing and sticky. Too much of it.

He's talking to her. His voice is deep, the accent sometimes not quite English."I had to shoot through your liver to get his heart. Unfortunately, the wound is so large you have virtually no chance of surviving." He says this all matter-of-fact, like he’s telling her she’s run out of washing powder or something. His mouth curls up into a grin, full of teeth shining white and sharp." _So_ _?”_

Seras concentrates and looks him right in the eyes. She doesn't need to say anything; they both know her decision.

-x-

Dying feels like sinking, like he's pulling her down and into him with every swallow. Seras breathes, slow ragged breaths, her mouth hanging slack, the back of her head cradled in one of his hands. His mouth is cold on her neck, tongue icy as it works against the skin to draw her lifeblood out of her. Alucard drinks until her chest stops rising and falling. When his fangs slide out of her, she feels a tug, as if there’s a string between him and his teeth marks. Disoriented, she blinks up at the moon, watching it swim into focus again.

_Ohh._

She gazes, entranced. "Was it always this beautiful?" she mutters, lips barely moving.

The smile she receives in response is soft and indulgent. "Yes.”

* * *

 

Seras runs her fingers over the patch embroidered onto the uniform. _We are on a mission from God._ She's never had much to do with God, even though she attended the kind of school where they said prayers every morning and the teachers wore wimples. (But that was after. When Mum and Dad were alive, the only religion at school was the Nativity play. Which seems a much more light-hearted approach to the whole thing than the school that had a giant effigy of a dead man in agony fixed to the side of the building.) She supposes she'll have even less to do with God now, that she's...if He even exists. Vampires do, so it would be her luck, wouldn't it.

A sigh heaves through her lips, drawing the pale blue gaze of the butler. Walter's well-spoken and seems friendly enough, but something about him isn't quite right. Seras knows this kind of thing; any good copper does.

"Sir Integra shouldn't be too much longer," Walter says, and the way he says it makes her feel like a complete child.

"Right," she agrees, nodding. "Sorry, I was just thinking." She fidgets, crossing and recrossing her legs, clasping her hands in her lap so she won't twist them.

Walter hums absently and checks his pocket watch, brow furrowed over his monocle. "I imagine you have a lot to think about, Miss Victoria. Excuse me."

She watches him disappear around the corner and startles at the sound of the door opening. Sir Integra is standing there, framed by a haze of cigar smoke. “Come in, Seras,” she says, and pushes the door open wider for her before retreating behind her polished wooden desk. Seras follows her in and shuts the door behind herself, feeling self-conscious and hating it.

Sir Integra takes a last drag on her cigar and stubs it out in the ashtray, then gets right to the point. “You wanted to see me.”

“I – yes, I did. Sir, it’s…it’s like this.” Seras takes a breath. Even though she doesn’t really need to anymore, she’s been doing it ever since she woke up. “I’d like to go home.” Sir Integra’s pale eyebrows furrow over her spectacles and Seras hurries to explain herself before the flat refusal can come out. “Not forever! I know I can’t – that _you_ can’t, just let me go off wherever.” Not when she’s a bloodthirsty creature of the night, and the woman in front of her runs a secret organisation dedicated to hunting things like her down. “I just want to go to my flat and get some things,” she finishes.

“There’s no need. Hellsing already moved all of your possessions into storage. You are of course, free to go through them at your leisure,” Sir Integra tells her.

Her heart sinks, a caustic feeling of disappointment. “Oh. Thank you.”

Sir Integra must notice. “Seras. It’s not merely a matter of trust. I have confidence that your master will follow my orders, and that you won’t disobey his. But you are _dead_ , on paper at least, and hushing up former colleagues and old friends of yours is a headache I can do without.”

She never thought of that. Seras looks away. “I don’t have any friends, Sir.” The statement hangs in the air a moment, before she puts on a cheery smile. “I get what you’re trying to say though. This is weird enough as it is, without me hanging on to my old life.” Seras pushes her chair back and stands up, uninvited. “Thank you.”

Behind the lenses of her glasses, the leader of Hellsing looks hard at her, as if she’s trying her best to suss out something that makes no sense. “You’re welcome.”

* * *

 

For the first few nights after she arrived, there would be blood on ice waiting for her, wrapped in little packets meant to give life-saving transfusions. The sight of it makes her teeth hurt and her skin feel too tight for her body. That bright shade of red is far too tempting.

“Awful stuff,” is Alucard’s opinion, as he lifts the pack from its nest of ice cubes. “They strip it down into different components and pump it full of drugs to stop it going off. And it’s _cold_.”

Seras tries not to laugh at the look on his face, which reminds her too much of a child faced with Brussels sprouts. “You could always put it in a pan and heat it up.”

Her master sneers at her. “You jest, but you’ve never taken blood from a vein, when it’s hot and spiced with all the passions of the soul.” He sighs, looking far too wistful. “You wouldn’t even know the difference you little Philistine.” He hands the blood to her.

She takes it with all the willingness of an arachnophobe being passed a tarantula and places it back in the ice bucket, turning so she’s not looking at it. _Was my blood good?_

Alucard smirks. _What do_ you _think, Police Girl?_

Seras gives him as dirty a look as she dares, and an image of a bedraggled kitten hissing ineffectually bounces back at her from outside her own mind. “ _Mas-ter_ ,” she whines, drawing out the syllables through gritted teeth. “Stop reading my thoughts. And I _have_ a name.”

“Learn not to think them so loudly then,” he replies, utterly unconcerned like always. “I have told you what you should do if you don’t want me to call you ‘Police Girl’.”

He has, and it’s not something she can bring herself to do. “I don’t know how,” she says instead, changing the subject back to safer territory. Lessons. After Sir Integra accused him of being ‘a lazy bugger who needs to take responsibility for your child’, he started making a point of calling her to him, or drifting into her room to teach her about being a vampire.

He teaches her how strong she is. Under his crimson gaze Seras uproots trees with the ease of picking daisies. Standing there holding a trunk thicker around than her own body with the same amount of effort required to lift a shopping bag, the epiphany finally hits. She drops the tree as though the bark sears her hands; it crashes thunderously into the undergrowth. Her hands are shaking. “I’m a monster.”

Alucard is less than sympathetic to her distress, rolling his eyes. “No, Police Girl. Not yet. Not by a long way. Why,” he pauses, his next words strangely soft, “you’re practically human.”


End file.
